About Gloria Mu

Gloria Mu publishes exclusively under her pen name. Born in Ukraine in 1973, she writes in Russian.

She studied at the Kharkiv State School of Art and the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Performing Arts. Family memory, women’s lives and the emotional detail of ordinary experience recur throughout her fiction, alongside myth and folklore.

Her debut, Retracing the Steps, first appeared online in 2007 and was published by AST in 2009. Set in Soviet Ukraine, it follows a child whose privileged, unruly world revolves around her father, a gifted surgeon. The book has appeared in multiple editions and was loosely adapted for the family television series Olivka, Igorek and Rex, which aired in May 2026.

The novella Jugglers follows the same protagonist into adulthood. The Game of Jart (2022), illustrated by Aleks Klepnev, draws on Mongol epic, Greek myth and Arthurian romance. It was a finalist for the 2024 New Horizons Fantasy Fiction Award.

The Last Sun, adapted from the Minotaur novella in The Game of Jart, is a completed graphic novel with adaptation and art by Lay-lo.

Translation and publishing rights are administered in the United Kingdom by Angara Management Ltd.